On 04/08/2012 11:14 PM, Dane Mutters wrote:
John,
So, while I'm, in fact, all /for /speaking bluntly, I also see the
quandary that speaking too bluntly produces when being "wrong" (for
the "owners" of a work) would mean that the months they spent on a
particular project would all be for nothing, should they admit that
they were actually wrong.
All things have a balance. Direct personal attacks are less useful than
attacks on a particular feature you don't like; attacks by proxy are
also more useful than direct personal attacks ("I don't know what idiot
came up with this..." that idiot is somewhere, but he's at least able to
shuffle back into the crowd and hide...). Directly grabbing the
developer in question and giving them a severe public dressing down is
just not constructive--let's ignore the issue and lob personal attacks
instead now eh? (Thorough dressings down are for the rare situation
where the person in question is a severely destructive idiot--this
doesn't happen much, aside from that one coworker we've all had that
gets paid to creates problems for everyone else.)
Either way, getting *too* uncivil is a bad thing. Strong language can
be very useful in some forums; but in forums where it's strongly
inappropriate you should pick your tone well enough to have the same
effect. Railing on something by proxy on a glancing blow may be
overstepping the bounds of civility, or it might be a needed slap
alongside the head for someone; continuing to ignore the feature itself
and continuously use it purely as a proxy to insult someone is just
malicious and useless.
We don't want to degenerate into a forum of continuous flame wars in any
case; but the truth is the occasional burn serves to remind us that fire
is hot and we should really pay attention to what we're doing. While
you don't want to burn your house down, you also really don't want to
freeze to death.
That all said, let's keep it civil. Or at least let's go for a farce.
Plus it's fun to read people speaking frankly, though if you spoke
like a Franc I guess you'd have to use a lot more accents and
apostrophes.
Well said. ;-)
If only brevity was my strong point.
--Dane
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